Is Mark Hughes right to blame chance-conversion for Southampton’s slow start?

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Southampton have only won once this season but Hughes doesn’t feel things are as bad as they seem – we look at the statistics to see if he’s right.

Southampton had a torrid time of things last season – and this one hasn’t started much better.

Having narrowly avoided relegation in May, Mark Hughes was kept on as manager but a run of one win in eight games is seeing the pressure grow on the Welshman.

Despite failing to score in their last three Premier League games – and conceding eight times – the Southampton boss feels the situation is being made to look worse than it is.

“I think you’re [the press] painting a picture that’s a little bit darker than it needs to be,” said Hughes, reports the Daily Mail. “We want more points on the board. We feel once we overcome a little bit of the anxiety we’ve got in our play at times, in key moments.

“In [the last three] games we created chances – it’s not as if we’re not getting shots off, it’s just our conversion rate we need to increase.

“If we convert more of them we’ll score more goals and win more games.”

Does Hughes have a point? A look into statistics from this season suggests he certainly does.

According to Squawka, Southampton have created the 8th most goal-scoring opportunities in the Premier League this season and, rather staggeringly, have had the third most shots – only Manchester City and Chelsea have had more.

The real problem is clear; despite the amount of opportunities on the opposition goal, Southampton have the second-word conversion rate in the league at a measly 5.1% – only Cardiff City can ‘boast’ worse.

The argument would be that the Saints’ low conversion rate is down to having too many difficult shots – or at least that would usually be the case, but their 8th-best chance creation suggests they’re absolutely fine at making good opportunities.

And so the statistics certainly back up Hughes’ claim – if the team can start converting its chances, there’s actually a lot of promise at St. Mary’s.